There is a call from the back door...

'Maw - I'm going out back with my bucket and tractor.....'

'Alright, you darling boy. Don't be late for lunch.'

This is a literary contrivance - he never tells me where he's going, or calls me Maw - and I have never before this called him 'my darling boy" unless the moment was much more passionate than this exchange.

Nevertheless, in due time the bucket swings and there are tractor noises from the nether regions of the yard.

Inside the house cookies get made and the music of Gottschalk swells and diminishes in graceful trills and arpeggios.

Eventually it is time for lunch....



"Is it really that time already???? " (he has never had a good sense of time, and now, at this late date, he has broken his watch strap and so has a perfectly good reason for 'never knowing what time it is..')
"I will just be a few moments" (translation, - give me half an hour or so).

Is that a fourth finger salute? If so, what does it mean? Did he get his fingers mixed up, or is he really pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose? And is he smirking???

Life's little mysteries, - best ignored....

But there, when all is said and done, Husband and his tractor are priceless and non-expendable.